Most year-stratified pricing models treat the “vintage premium” as a universal concept — older coins are rarer, therefore more valuable. But a cross-chain analysis reveals a more nuanced reality: the structural shape of vintage supply differs dramatically across Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin, and Ethereum, creating distinct vintage premium gradients that do not move in lockstep.
The HODL Gradient Spectrum
The most fundamental metric for comparing vintage supply across chains is the HODL Waves distribution — the percentage of each network’s circulating supply that has remained unmoved for specific time periods. When plotted side by side, four very different profiles emerge.
Bitcoin: The Deep-Age Anchor
Bitcoin sits at the extreme end of the HODL gradient. As of mid-2025, approximately 68-72% of its 19.7 million circulating BTC has not moved in over a year. An extraordinary 45-50% has been dormant for 3+ years, and 30-32% for 5+ years. This deeply aged supply is the substrate on which Bitcoin’s vintage premium is built — coins from 2010-2013 are not just old, they belong to an ecosystem where almost three-quarters of all coins rarely trade.
Litecoin: The Mid-Point
Litecoin occupies a middle position on the HODL gradient. Roughly 55-65% of its 84 million LTC supply has remained unmoved for 1+ years, with 35-40% dormant for 3+ years and 20-25% for 5+ years. This places LTC squarely between BTC and DOGE — older than Dogecoin’s supply but younger than Bitcoin’s, matching its intermediate role in the year-stratified asset class.
Dogecoin: The Active Circulator
Dogecoin exhibits the youngest vintage supply profile of the four, with only 45-55% of its 144 billion DOGE supply unmoved for 1+ years and 25-30% for 3+ years. A mere 10-15% has remained idle for 5+ years, reflecting DOGE’s higher speculative turnover and inflation-driven supply expansion. The concentration of holdings is also a factor — the top 100 addresses control roughly 50% of supply, and many of these whale wallets are actively managed.
Ethereum: The Complex Case
Ethereum presents the most complex vintage profile. While 60-70% of ETH supply has remained unmoved for 1+ year, the account-based model obscures the true age picture. The transition to Proof-of-Stake in September 2022 introduced a structural overlay: over 32 million ETH (approximately 28% of circulating supply) is currently staked, creating a novel category of “strategically locked” coins that neither trade nor age like UTXO dormant coins.
| Metric | BTC | LTC | DOGE | ETH |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1+ year unmoved | 68-72% | 55-65% | 45-55% | 60-70% |
| 3+ years unmoved | 45-50% | 35-40% | 25-30% | 30-40% |
| 5+ years unmoved | 30-32% | 20-25% | 10-15% | 10-20% |
| Actively traded (1d-3m) | 8-12% | 15-25% | 20-30% | 12-18% |
| Top holdings concentration | Moderate | Moderate | High (top 100 ~50%) | Moderate-high |
Stress Events: A Natural Experiment
Major market stress events provide the most revealing natural experiment for cross-chain vintage behavior. When old coins move, they reveal the real distribution boundaries of each chain’s vintage supply.
March 2020: The COVID Crash
The March 12-13, 2020 crash delivered near-simultaneous stress across all four chains:
BTC Coin Days Destroyed peaked at 36 million coin days on March 13 — the highest single-day CDD in BTC history to that point. Notably, coins aged 3+ years accounted for approximately 40% of destroyed days, indicating that even deeply aged Bitcoin supply was willing to capitulate.
LTC Coin Days Destroyed reached approximately 8 million coin days, or about 22% of BTC’s CDD volume when adjusted for market cap — a proportionally similar stress response.
DOGE Coin Days Destroyed hit approximately 200 billion coin days (using DOGE’s different base unit), with approximately 6% of old supply moving — a smaller proportion than BTC’s ~12%, suggesting DOGE holders were less inclined to move aged coins.
ETH Age Consumed (the account-based proxy for CDD) reached approximately 8 million ETH-days, with about 10% of older supply moving.
The price correlations during this event were remarkably tight: BTC/LTC at 0.96, BTC/ETH at 0.94, and BTC/DOGE at 0.88 (7-day window). Yet the structure of the moves differed fundamentally — BTC’s old supply moved deepest and fastest, while DOGE’s aged coins lagged by 2-5 days.
2022 Bear Market: Synchronized Hardening
The 2022 bear market (FTX collapse, 3AC liquidation, LUNA implosion) created the opposite effect — a synchronized expansion of old supply across all chains:
| Chain | 1y+ Supply (Jan 2022) | 1y+ Supply (Dec 2022) | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| BTC | ~55% | ~72% | +17 pp |
| LTC | ~45% | ~62% | +17 pp |
| DOGE | ~35% | ~50% | +15 pp |
| ETH | ~50% | ~68% | +18 pp |
The near-uniform expansion of approximately 15-18 percentage points across all four chains is remarkable. Despite fundamentally different coin-age profiles, the HODLing response to the 2022 bear market was strikingly synchronized. However, the starting points matter: the same proportional hardening from different bases means DOGE’s actively traded supply (expressed in absolute terms) remained significantly higher than BTC’s, explaining why DOGE’s vintage premium gradient is flatter.
Cross-Asset Price Correlation vs. Vintage Premium Correlation
A critical distinction emerges when separating spot price correlation from vintage premium correlation.
Spot price correlations between these assets are well-documented and consistently high:
- BTC/LTC: r = 0.84-0.88 across market cycles
- BTC/ETH: r = 0.81-0.91 (post-Merge: 0.83)
- BTC/DOGE: r = 0.70-0.88 (more volatile, dropping to 0.55 during Elon Musk tweet episodes)
- LTC/DOGE: r = 0.76-0.81
Vintage premium correlation, however — that is, whether a 2013 BTC coin premium over spot moves with a 2013 DOGE coin premium over spot — remains largely unquantified. The data suggests these premiums decouple during regime changes:
During bull markets, mid-aged coins (1-2y dormant) tend to unlock first across all chains simultaneously, suggesting some vintage premium synchronization.
During bear markets, the 6m-1y aging band is the first to become distressed across all chains.
During idiosyncratic events (Elon Musk’s DOGE tweets, ETH Merge), the vintage premium structure of the affected chain diverges while other chains’ vintage premiums remain stable.
Implications for Year-Stratified Pricing
The existence of a distinct HODL gradient across chains carries direct implications for year-stratified pricing:
BTC’s deeply aged supply creates the steepest vintage premium curve — with 30% of coins effectively removed from circulation for 5+ years, the supply constraint on old BTC is the most severe, justifying the highest OTC vintage premium (estimated 25-50% for 2010-2013 coins).
DOGE’s flat HODL gradient limits vintage premium formation — with only 10-15% of supply unmoved for 5+ years and high whale concentration, the year-stratified premium for old DOGE is inherently thinner, explaining reported OTC premiums of only 5-15% for 2013-era coins.
LTC occupies an intermediate position — between BTC’s deep-age structure and DOGE’s active circulation, LTC’s vintage premium (estimated 15-30% for 2011 coins) fits its mid-gradient HODL profile.
ETH’s dual-layer supply — natural HODL behavior + PoS staking — creates a novel vintage structure where staked ETH (32M+ coins, ~28% of supply) cannot move by design, effectively creating an artificial age floor that compresses the observable vintage premium gradient.
Conclusion
The cross-chain HODL gradient reveals that vintage supply is not a universal property of old cryptocurrencies — it is a chain-specific structural feature shaped by monetary policy, UTXO vs. account models, whale concentration, and historical distribution events. While spot prices for BTC, LTC, DOGE, and ETH correlate strongly during both bull and bear phases, their vintage premium structures evolve along distinct trajectories determined by deeply embedded supply characteristics.
For year-stratified investors, this means that a “vintage year premium” on one chain cannot be naively extrapolated to another. The same chronological vintage — say, 2013 coins — carries fundamentally different scarcity dynamics on Bitcoin (where 68-72% of all supply rarely moves) versus Dogecoin (where over half the supply trades actively). The HODL gradient is not a single curve; it is four.
— Encryption Archive · VintD.org